Sunday, December 28, 2008

Statutory Inventions and the Public Domain

Basically it's a way of publishing an invention to the public via the USPTO. Rarely used for obvious reasons.

Question #1: Why don't open source people apply for these USPTO invention declarations? It seems to be the patent law equivalent of a BSD/MIT license.. ie "use/extend it for any purpose but it's still my work and you can't claim it as your own work."

The more interesting tidbit on there is, while obvious, a potential source of great technical material. Since 1999 when you file a patent it is published 18 months after the file date. Once an application is abandoned the application and is published by the USPTO and it becomes public domain.

Question #2: Are rejected patents whose appeals have run out then public domain? I can't seem to find a clear answer.

How many rejected/abandoned software patents etc out there from Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, etc are there that contain very valuable algorithms and techniques that are now public domain? Yes this is a bit like looking for gold in the trash can...

Notes:

The European Patent Office by treaty publishes many USPTO patent apps.. and honestly has a better interface for getting the status of your patent than I have yet found at the USPTO.